I would like to ask the editor of the Maui News to be more sensitive to their coverage of the Hula Bowl or the lack of it. Having been involved with the Hula Bowl for the last 3 years with helping stage the Hula performances before the game, I find it rather weird of the Maui News to publish a front-page story on how everyone should bring umbrellas and warm jackets. Because it "might rain for the big game". We who were involved were not happy with the coverage in your paper that probably kept a lot of people away. Already Maui Visitors Bureau and the producers are struggling in selling tickets, trying to make us on Maui look good and your newspaper come out with such negativism.

We had almost 500 dancers practicing for months, even in the rain on Friday evening, trying to make this national event happen. And the reason being that the rest of the nation can see how "we do it on Maui". The stupidity of ESPN showed over the last 3 years in the row, by NOT showing the Hula dancing nationally during the opening shots is no excuse. Is this not called the "Hula Bowl"? You would think that besides a front page shot of the hula dancers, there would be some kind of story about the "tutuÕs" that were dancing and the very little children that were so gracefully swaying to the music of the Waiehu Sons. Instead when you turned the page it was only about the football game.

This is still Maui and your reporter should have picked up on the countless of humanistic stories that was there to be told. Mahalo.

Kahu Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr.
Pukalani, Maui

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Ho`iho`i Mai

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